Typical flowline systems that are used in the food industry comprise a conveyor and multiple of processing stations arranged along the conveyor where food products are processed. The processed food products are commonly released from the processing stations onto an underlying take-away conveyor that may feed the processed food products into any type of subsequent food processing equipment where subsequent processing steps take place. As an example, if the food products are fish fillets, such food processing equipment may be an X-ray apparatus comprising a cutting device, such as a high pressure water jet cutter, for cutting the fish fillets automatically around e.g. the pin bones and even into portions. Other examples for such subsequent food processing equipment could be a freezer for freezing the processed food products, or a portioning device for cutting the processed food products into portions.
Such a take-away conveyor reserves a fixed sloth length for the processed food, e.g. the fish fillets, typically such that it corresponds to at least the length of the largest fish so as to prevent the fish fillets from overlapping, which is obviously not acceptable when the take-away conveyor is configured to act as an infeed conveyor for the food processing equipment. This however has the drawback that if the processed food products varies much in length, there will be an empty space between the processed food products, e.g. the fish fillets, which affects the throughput of the processing at the food processing equipment.